True Christianity is Unique Among all Religions...

If one is to look at the various world religions one finds a common core.  It is centered upon the notion that one must perform in a certain fashion and in doing so work their way into the good graces of their particular deity.  Of course this notion in Buddhism is that such leads to good karma in the next life.   

This is often described as a works theology.   Of the many problems attendant to such a notion, three are as follows.  To begin with if acceptance is based upon good works, then those incapable of same are immediately eliminated.  Second, is the matter of what constitutes an acceptable good work.  Who really knows?  Then there is the quantity problem in that no one is quite sure how much is necessary.

There is but one exception.  That exception is found in genuine Christianity. 

To be sure there are many facsimiles of Christianity which in reality are distortions of the genuine.  The problem is not with what Jesus Christ taught and lived nor is it with what the Bible teaches.  The problem lies with what man has attempted to add.   In some sense it is the idea that one can improve upon genuine Christianity.

This amalgamated "christianity" does two things.  First, it simply does not work as God had intended and thus eventually will self destruct and fail.  History teaches such is so.  Second, it presents a wrong picture of what Jesus was all about and thus gives much fodder to His critics such as Christopher Hitchens, Richard Dawkins, and the like. 

Mahatma Gandhi was such a critic.  Upon his departure from South Africa he said, “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians. Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”   Jesus Christ was genuine, while the Christians Gandhi had in mind were the facsimile. It is said that he frequently read the Sermon on the Mount and had in his immediate possession a copy of the New Testament.

What sets the unique and genuine Christian faith apart is this.  One does not add some performance or another in order to work his way into a right relationship with God (salvation).   Such is quite impossible and most certainly leaves a wrong impression of what being a Christian is all. 

However, having said that,  there are expected changes in behavior.  One such change is the move from "selfishness" to "otherness."  As a part of that change a person begins to look outward from himself.  In that "otherness" one sees and is touched by the needs of others.  Thus his behavior toward other people moves from a selfish intention to that of the best interest of the other.  History is replete with example of those who gave their all in service of another.

A study of such things will reveal that almost all of the helping agencies and social movements are the result of such Christian "otherness."  Even leaving Christian "otherness" aside for the moment, few if any helping organization start without a concern for the needs of others.  They all pretty much began with an "otherness" attitude. 

The summary is this. The performance of good works is not to earn one’s way into the good graces of the Divine but it is the expected outcome, indeed the change that takes place when one enters into that right relationship with God through His Son, Jesus Christ.

More to follow...

How Many World Religions Can say...

How many world religions can say what those who embrace Judeo-Christian belief can say?

Some like to postulate that all religions are the same and that all roads lead to God.  However upon close examination there is one important difference in Christianity that no other faith can claim.  It is but one of a number of things that sets Christianity apart from all others.

 
God in an audible voice called Moses up on Mt. Sinai.  Several thousand Children of Israel heard the voice of God.  Moses obeyed and went up on the Mountain and the result was the Law which gave man a measure by which to see he is sinful.

   

God in an audible voice said that Jesus was His beloved Son in whom He was well pleased.  Others present that day who witnessed Jesus' baptism heard those words.  Within three years Jesus would die on the the cross, rise victorious over death, hell, and the grave, and mankind would have a Savior.


God in an audible voice challenged the Pharisee Saul, with the words, "Why are you persecuting Me?"  Those present that day heard the voice.  The outcome was that Saul would come to Christ and be used by God to write most of the New Testament and thus instruct those who came to Christ how to live out their faith.


When the TORAH was written there were those still alive who could say, "Yes, we were there that day and we heard the voice of God."  When the Gospels were written there were those still alive who could say, "Yes, we were there that day and we heard the voice of God."  When Paul the Apostle wrote of his Damascus Road experience, there were those still alive who would say, "Yes we were there that day and we heard the voice of God."

NO OTHER world religion has any kind of a record of a group, much less three groups who actually heard the voice of God. Indeed Christianity is unique among all religions.

More to follow!

“You Can’t Stand the Truth!”

“You Can’t Stand the Truth!”

Who can read those words and not think of Jack Nicolas as Marine Col Jessup in “A Few Good Men?”

Yet, that is a question that divides people, not just in a movie but in the conduct of life.

The question we all need to face is this.  “Can you stand the truth?”  If one can stand the truth, they will go wherever necessary to seek out that truth.   If one can stand the truth, they will push their truth paradigm ever deeper until it is either validated or falters.   

On the other hand if such a person limits that truth to what they  choose to believe then such truth is a product of one’s volition*—that is one’s will.  Such may mean that honest inquiry is lacking.  Why would this be so?  Consider the following.

On one side of the question you have intellectual integrity on the other side intellectual bias.  On one side you have intellectual vulnerability on the other side intellectual resistance.  On one side you have intellectual bravery on the other side you have intellectual cowardice.  On one side you have intellectual daring on the other side intellectual cowering.  On one side you have intellectual freedom on the other side you have intellectual bondage.    

Yet it is the one who lives in a world of intellectual bias, resistance, cowardice, and cowering who proclaims his intellectual freedom all the while disparaging those of differing opinion.   One must ask, “Why not hear what others have to say?” Aristotle observed,

“It is the mark of an educated mind to be able to entertain a thought without accepting it.”

What is most interesting is that those who claim to be willing to follow the path to truth wherever necessary, at least in my experience, close off all but what they can mentally deduce.  Their position is best described as cynical of anything that cannot pass their own rational filtration processes. 

Classically this is called rationalism and in the extreme it rejects all other avenues to truth such as Empiricism and Existentialism.  In lesser degrees it is the filter applied to other avenues to truth.

Three simple observations are to be made at this point.

First, one does well to push truth ever deeper to see if it is durable or destructed.  If one’s truth is not durable then it most certainly will fall in the face of challenge.  It is the brave person who can face that eventuality and re-chart his life and purpose.  The coward resorts to affective responses and personal attack.

Second, there is no new truth only the discovery of the truth that already exists.  For that reason he is prudent who does not become so ensnared in a truth paradigm that it cannot change with the discovery of deeper realities.

Third, truth is a stewardship issue.  When one discovers deeper and deeper truth such vests that person with a responsibility to then live out that truth no matter the cost.

In summary, underpinning the above is a simple principle.  It is this.  Truth is a character issue and today in western culture truth discovered, challenged, and lived out, has been relegated to a place of irrelevance.  Indeed it has been sacrificed on the altar of expedience. 

*thought elucidated at http://www.gospeloutreach.net/bible.html

“Living Life Mired in ‘Freedom’”

“Living Life Mired in ‘Freedom’”

The notion under discussion is the veracity and benefit of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures in general and in particular do they give or restrict freedom?

The matter of Christianity hangs upon one question and one question alone.  Are the Judeo-Christian Scriptures reliable?  Consider but one existential, well subjective response.

The reality is that no book has undergone such criticism and scrutiny as has the Bible.  Yet over and over again, the critic who seeks to destroy the reliability of the Scriptures in fact ends up disproving his own supposition.  Perhaps the best known is C. S. Lewis.

What most honest inquirers discover is that when one passes through the barriers of culture, language, and time and thus travels back through history to the time of the writing of the Scriptures, many of the objections as to the reliability of the Bible are set to rest.  Archeology has contributed and daily contributes significantly more to these studies.  The miraculous beauty of the Book is that its truths transcend such barriers as mentioned.

The problem lies not in the reliability of the text but in the attitude brought to the results of such inquiry as is made. The underlying issue prevalent in Western culture has nothing to do with the reliability of the Bible and everything to do with the notion that one can construct one’s own truth paradigm without the benefit of any outside agency.  The attendant mantra goes something like, “I am free to believe as I will and I will believe as I choose.”

In terms of the Gospels, Augustine observed the outcome for such a person who claims that freedom is this.  “If you believe what you like in the gospels, and reject what you don’t like, it is not the gospel you believe, but yourself.”

Said in another fashion, one becomes a law unto oneself and in doing so seeks to throw off the shackles of authority.  Such a “throw off” does not have a terminus point but extends ever concentrically outward encompassing other divinely established authorities.  Ironically such a person perceives himself as living outside of restrictions when in fact he is bound by the very freedom he proclaims. 

Hobart Mauer, Harvard Professor of Psychology, observed, “In becoming amoral, ethically neutral and free we have cut the very roots of our being, lost our deepest sense of selfhood and identity.  And with neurotics themselves, now find ourselves asking, "Who am I? What is my deepest destiny? And what does living really mean?"

One might expect such a comment from a Christian or at least a person of faith but this is from an atheist and a skeptic.  As the individual and as western culture has become inculcated with such “Me-isms” it searches for more and more freedom only to finds itself mired deeper and deeper in such questions as Professor Mauer asked.  The self become the religion of choice but in reality is a strong and insatiable master demanding ever more. 

The outcome evident today is as the English music journalist, biographer and poet Steve Turner said when he wrote and following is but a part of his observaiton,

“We believe that each man must find the truth that is right for him. Reality will adapt accordingly. The universe will readjust. History will alter. We believe that there is no absolute truth excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth.

“We believe in the rejection of creeds, And the flowering of individual thought.

“If chance be the Father of all flesh, disaster is his rainbow in the sky and when you hear

State of Emergency! Sniper Kills Ten! Troops on Rampage! Whites go Looting! Bomb Blasts School! It is but the sound of man worshiping his maker.

The individual proclaiming freedom from the Word of God and the God of the Word can only plunge ever deeper and deeper into the very bondage the mentioned, "...there is no absolute truth excepting the truth that there is no absolute truth."  In such a plunge he becomes ensnared in the very bondage he decries.  Yet those who embrace and plunge ever deeper into the Word of God and the God of the Word though perceived by the skeptic to be in bondage in reality find ever more freedom.  

Where there to be no other evidence, existential and even subjective, that demonstrates the veracity of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures--the genuine freedom found in Christ, amply demonstrates such to be worth considering.  In fact, it is the skeptic who is profoundly mired in his "Me-ism" that refuses to see how very bound is his view and life.  It is he who fails to see how very free is the one who names Jesus as Lord.